Backstage at the CSO: Katy Clusen, associate director of CSO for Kids

Katy Clusen has followed an unconventional career path that has taken her from being an elementary teacher for 11 years in Chicago and Aurora to overseeing all the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s children’s programs.

In the summer of 2001, while attending a summer meeting where she was teaching at Horace Mann Elementary School, 8050 S. Chappell Ave., she learned that the music teacher had left: “And without even thinking, I said, ‘I’m certified to teach music.’ ” Clusen was feeling a burst of confidence after conducting the Artemis Singers — Chicago’s lesbian feminist chorus, of which she is a longtime member, at a festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

She got the job, and music has been at the center of life since. “Little did I know that I was walking into my true calling,” she said.

For 13 years, Clusen has worked in the Negaunee Music Institute, the CSO’s educational arm, taking over her current position, associate director of CSO for Kids in October 2023. The CSO for Kids program, which includes school concerts, family concerts and Once Upon a Symphony presentations for preschoolers, reached 22,000 children in 2024/25. “All the ways that children and adults in their lives interact with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — that falls under the title, CSO for Kids,” Clusen said.

The next big events of CSO for Kids will come in early November, with the program Which Instrument Should I Play?, with guest conductor Andrew Grams and five-time Grammy Award-nominee Justin Roberts, a singer-songwriter who specializes in children’s music. Two performances will be offered Nov. 15 as part of the CSO for Kids family matinee series. They will be preceded earlier in the week with six school presentations for students in grades 6-12 of Sounding Together with guest conductor Thomas Wilkins. About half of the attendees will come from the Chicago Public Schools, with the Negaunee Music Institute covering ticket fees and transportation, and the rest will be drawn from private and suburban schools.  

When Clusen began teaching music, her goal was to emulate her childhood music teacher at Gates Elementary School in Aurora, Nancy Ann Tarling. “I just thought, ‘If I could be a third as good as Nancy Tarling, that would be amazing,’” Clusen said. “She was like this goddess. I just tried every day to be as good as her.”

Several weeks after she started in her new job, Sept. 11 happened. “Then, all of sudden,” she said, “the music instruction I’m doing is also an exercise in healing my students and myself.” As a way to bring the community together, she organized a large holiday program — something the school hadn’t done previously.

“It was beautiful,” she said. “I remember: The kids shined. The parents were so proud. The energy was phenomenal. I drove home that night, and I was like: I could die right now, and I will have done what I was supposed to do.”

But after more than a decade as a music teacher, her position became threatened, and she took a job in the Negaunee Institute in 2012 as the Coordinator of Learning Programs, helping teachers integrate music into their curriculum and capitalize on the school concerts at Symphony Center.  “They wanted someone who had a close connection to education,” she said. “So that was my entry into the CSO.”

As associate director of CSO for Kids, Clusen leads a team that includes two other staff members. She is responsible for planning and producing all of the CSO’s children’s concerts, which includes working with conductors to plan the repertoire, helping to conceive themed scripts for the presentations and develop support materials for teachers.

In a recent interview, Clusen discussed some of the many aspects of her work:

Do you sometimes hire a playwright or someone else to come up with a story or a script for CSO for Kids concerts?

Yes, for an upcoming concert that Mei-Ann Chen [music director of the Chicago Sinfonietta] is conducting in March called Classical Elements, I have hired a playwright to write a script that brings Chen’s ideas to life. We will also hire an actor to portray what the playwright conjures. It will be very fun — the whole process of auditioning the actors and understanding what kind of skill sets will work. We’re thinking maybe somebody who has some skills in the circus arts or someone who is adept at clowning just to embody this world, this universe that we’re traveling to in in her concert. It’s fun to think about who that will be and to bring those ideas to the playwright and to collaborate with him.

I guess that’s where it’s helpful that Chicago has a rich theater scene.

Absolutely! We partner with so many different cultural organizations, including many theaters,.Once Upon a Symphony, our program for early childhood, 3- to 5-year-olds, has been a joint project between the CSO and the Chicago Children’s Theatre for many years, dating back to its premiere in 2011. And we are currently working on other early-childhood projects with the Chicago Children’s Theatre that we’re getting ready to announce really soon. Chicago is a great town. Not only do we have great theater, but we have a collaborative spirit.

What is one of the biggest challenges of your job?

I really think one of the biggest challenges is just to get the larger public to understand that they have this incredible orchestra in their backyard and that families and schools should be coming to experience the sound of this magnificent orchestra. My team and I have worked very hard on the school end of that. We are going to have concerts that are completely filled in November, because we have done such a fantastic job of marketing to schools this year. We developed a strategic plan coming out of the pandemic to really get schools reactivated and build up their musical muscle for coming back in the hall. So in November, we will be doing six concerts for schools during the week of Nov. 10, and each concert will have 2,500 attendees.

What gives you the most pleasure in this job?

So many things, really. Being able to work on behalf of the orchestra is a real privilege. I was raised with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. My grandparents were donors and were subscribers. This institution has just been part of my family for generations. But also, the work that we do to bring the orchestra to life for families and students, the repertoire we choose, it goes back also to the production piece of it. What is it that we’re presenting that is really going to spark the interest of a kid to say, “I want to do that. I want to play an instrument. Or I want to be the stagehand. Or I want to be an usher.” How do we create a really radical, welcoming space for everybody to come in and know that they are part of this space? I would say, also, that the work I get to do with teachers is equally a privilege, because it is demonstrating to the leadership in this school district that the arts are important, that music is important in the lives of students.

Do you think the children’s concerts are different than they were 20 or 30 years ago? Or are they largely the same?

It is largely as was it was 20 or 30 years ago. I would say we do partner with all of these fantastic theaters in town, but we were doing that 30 years ago, too. There are also these incredible conductors who can present a concert without any other bells and whistles, and they’re so effective, and they have the kids eating right out of their hands. It’s an incredible thing.

Given that children all have phones today and are very plugged into technology, are they still captivated by what they encounter at the CSO?

Yes, they are. They are captivated maybe in a different way than they were previously. Maybe they’re looking at it through a different lens. Last year, the orchestra was playing the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth [Symphony], and the kids just went bananas. They all know that opening motif. Or [Mozart’s] Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. They are just thrilled to be able to hear those kinds of pieces live because it’s part of the soundtracks of their videos or whatever else they are engaging with.

I think that teachers play a big role in our audiences still being really engaged, and we really try to create phenomenal teachers’ guides to make sure teachers are given a whole host of ways they can introduce the music to children before coming to a concert.